


A Factual Account of the Important Details of Eustace Scrubb's First Visit to Narnia

by scribblemyname



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Animal Transformations, Friendship, Gen, Loss, Remix, dragon - Freeform, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-04 11:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4135389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Eustace recounted the facts of his previous adventures in Narnia, beginning in the middle with the dragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Factual Account of the Important Details of Eustace Scrubb's First Visit to Narnia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsnake05](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Navigating by stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1326547) by [redsnake05](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05). 



They weren't friends, as Jill had made clear enough. Eustace hadn't exactly been a nice boy before he went to Narnia the first time, and he hadn't been close to Jill between his Narnia visits for her to have a wholly different impression—if a different impression at all, Eustace considered glumly.

But they were in this together because Aslan had brought them here, and Aslan always knew the right people for the right job. So Puddleglum said. It'd be easy to write the marshwiggle off if Eustace's last time in Narnia hadn't borne it out fairly well.

Jill shrugged off a little of her prickliness, proud of her fire after the wet day they'd had traveling, and took a breath. "I'm sorry."

Eustace stared at her, then realized what she was offering. Truce.

"I'm sorry too," he said. "You're right, we hardly know each other and I shouldn't have talked like a fool."

"Well, we have time to talk," Jill said. "We can start with the easy things. You could start by telling me about your last journey in Narnia. I've heard bits of it, but not the whole thing."

Eustace smiled as he remembered. "It was a great adventure, even though I was an insufferable little prig at first. I was seasick, you see, but there was much worse than that." He paused. "I'm not very good at telling stories. I start in the middle and break off and don't know the important things to say. I never learned how from reading books that tell a story. All my books are about facts." It still wouldn't be the whole thing with him telling it.

But "Facts can be a story too," Jill said pragmatically. "Start telling, and I'll ask when I get stuck."

 

* * *

Eustace began, as promised, in the middle. "I became a dragon for several weeks."

"A dragon." Puddleglum looked highly alarmed, or as much as he could around the gloom of his natural expression.

Jill didn't at first understand. "Worse than usual?"

"No, a real dragon. It was beastly." He shuddered just remembering the horror of his scales and loneliness and all that had gone with that transformation. "Fire breathing and everything."

"But people don't turn into dragons," Jill protested.

"It is a great and terrible magic," Puddleglum intoned.

Eustace was simply cross. "Do you want to hear about what happened or not?"

Awkward silence descended on Jill and Eustace, though Puddleglum seemed largely unaffected. At last, Jill nodded.

So Eustace recounted the facts of his previous adventures in Narnia, beginning in the middle with the dragon. "I went into the cave and found a dragon's hoard, though I didn't know it at the time. They told me this later after I was a boy again. There was a gold bracelet that used to belong to one of their old lords they were searching for, and that's what got stuck on my arm when I was a dragon."

"They were searching for some lords?" Jill interjected.

"The lords that sailed beyond the Lone Islands," Puddleglum added.

"Yes," Eustace agreed. "Those lords. They were Caspian's father's friends, so he wanted to find them, and one of them had become a dragon before I had but died before we could save him."

"That's dreadful."

"I know," Eustace agreed matter-of-factly. "I don't know what I would have done without Reepicheep. He was a mouse with a mean sword and more bravery than anyone else I've met. He didn't like me, but he'd sit next to me when I was too smoky and awful to be around anyone and tell me stories to try and cheer me up." He trailed off into silence.

He had never even realized he was lonely before until he couldn't pretend not to be and until every dragonish thought and feeling had come out onto the outside.

He shook his head and forced himself to move onto the next facts. "That's when I met Aslan, when he came and made me a boy again."

"How did he do that?" Jill asked, interestedly.

"It's hard to explain, but he tore the dragon skins off of me and I washed in a pool where I became a boy again." He took in a deep breath. "Edmund told me I'd met Aslan."

"He's a little scary," Jill admitted, "but wonderful anyway."

"He's not a tame lion," Puddleglum agreed.

"But wonderful," Eustace repeated.

* * *

"So what happened to Reepicheep?" Jill asked after Eustace had exhausted his supply of unbelievable facts.

"He went to Aslan's country," Eustace said quietly. "It was a great adventure, and nothing would please him more."

It also meant continually, _always_ being with Aslan, that terrifying and wonderful presence he'd seen and felt and heard when the Lion had come to rescue him from his own self and dragon nature. But as splendid as that was for Reepicheep, Eustace couldn't help but wish a little selfishly that he could have seen Reepicheep again here. Trumpkin was a good dwarf and a good friend of Caspian's and Eustace had even been glad to see him, but he missed the little mouse who had leaned against Eustace's flank and told him all the reasons why his lot was like that of great men and women who had gone before.

The stories hadn't been comforting, but Reepicheep's small warm presence and fierce little voice had warmed a part of Eustace he'd never even realized before was cold.

"He was my friend." The words pushed out of him and into the space where Jill could hear them. Facts. A simple fact taken from the middle.

Jill was quiet a few moments before she broke the tension with a question. "Like Caspian was?"

Caspian. He'd missed Caspian because he hadn't even recognized his friend, the young king, inside the old man he'd become. He'd missed the opportunity to see him either.

"Like Caspian," Eustace agreed softly. He didn't want her to hear his voice break a little. He was still a boy and she was a girl, and they'd never been particularly close.

But he rolled over and pressed his back to hers for warmth, reaching out for the human connection he'd discovered right when it was taken away. He would be a friend if he could, as others had been friends to him.


End file.
